Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Dec 07, 2013 12:17 pm Hi all, Just wondering if anyone is/has building with Blueprint Homes? How did you find them and did they keep their building time guarantee? My partner and I are building our first home with them, had a few setbacks but our building contracts are finally ready and we will be awaiting formal finance. Would love to hear others experiences bad or good. Steph Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 2Dec 07, 2013 12:44 pm I've got Pre-handover Inspection on Wednesday with handover scheduled for the 20th. Ours is a custom build - we drew our own plans from scratch. The process has been fairly smooth. Our brickwork took a lot longer than normal due to only having one bricklayer. But since plate height, it's gone really quick. Quality of work seems to be good. My supervisor said that he averages 17weeks from slab to handover, but the delay with the bricky has cost us an extra month. When we build again, we would definitely look at them again. The only downside is that their prestart selections are quite limited, however they have been fine with us providing some of the product (tiles). Just tell them you want to make your tile selections at European Ceramics - that's their preferred supplier and have a really great range and showroom. If you want anything else provided yourself, just tell them. All in all, a good experience! Good luck with the build! Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 3Dec 07, 2013 1:50 pm That sounds excellent. So how many weeks did it take them to build? I thought pre start would be fun but it's now looking to be daunting with so many selections to make and the pressure to choose the right one. Argh! But so excited for progress. Hopefully everything goes well! Thanks for your feedback Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 4Dec 09, 2013 12:54 am Sorry for the delay! It'll be about 27 weeks in total I think. Don't worry about prestart. It's quite straight forward. If you feel uncomfortable about your selections after, then let them know and ask to go back in there by yourself. We did that and took a friend who is an interior designer, to help us reselect paint and tiles. Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 5Dec 09, 2013 10:14 am How did you find their selections? They didn't have a tile brochure in our prestart folder, I've heard their selection isn't that great. I'm just worried about how much it will cost if we want extra things? I'm interested in walk in shower but not sure pricing. Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 6Dec 09, 2013 6:02 pm It's true, they're selections are a little limiting, but as I said, tell them you want to make your tile selections at European Ceramics (that's where they get their tiles anyway). They've got a great selection of tiles there - just call up and make an appointment. If you want to choose different toilets, sinks etc, then tell them the models you want. Just don't take no for an answer Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 7Dec 11, 2013 12:16 pm We have the Della Vita 450x450 porcelain floor tiles in our contract in the main living areas. Have you heard of them or seen them? I've asked the consultant at the company for a brochure or something but can only view them at their display centre. Hope they are nice! Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 8Dec 17, 2013 9:52 am I've just got my keys in the last week with Blueprint ... have to say not overly impressed with them. The only promise they kept (sort of) was the build time. From slab to keys was 21 weeks. I too had a custom design, and it felt as though nobody paid particular attention to the plans. We constantly found things they had stuffed up, so luckily we live not too far away and were able to get to site each weekend. The end product is OK ... a few areas that look like I could have done them myself which is disappointing. Will bring up during maintenance period and see how I go. Admin with them is horrid. The pre-start lady I had was useless and offered no insight or help above just writing down what you selected from their limited options. 2/5 ... will build with another company next time. Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 9Dec 18, 2013 1:15 pm Steph23 We have the Della Vita 450x450 porcelain floor tiles in our contract in the main living areas. Have you heard of them or seen them? I've asked the consultant at the company for a brochure or something but can only view them at their display centre. Hope they are nice! No sorry, we are getting vinyl planks after handover - which will be tomorrow!! Super excited! Gonna start putting on the plaster sealer on Saturday, as I hear it stinks and will be good to air it out over Christmas. pd11790 I've just got my keys in the last week with Blueprint ... have to say not overly impressed with them. The only promise they kept (sort of) was the build time. From slab to keys was 21 weeks. I too had a custom design, and it felt as though nobody paid particular attention to the plans. We constantly found things they had stuffed up, so luckily we live not too far away and were able to get to site each weekend. The end product is OK ... a few areas that look like I could have done them myself which is disappointing. Will bring up during maintenance period and see how I go. Admin with them is horrid. The pre-start lady I had was useless and offered no insight or help above just writing down what you selected from their limited options. 2/5 ... will build with another company next time. Sorry to hear about your experience. I do agree regarding pre-start, our lady was a little 'fresh'. Didn't offer us many upgrades. Overall a fairly pleasing experience for us so far. Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 11Jan 06, 2014 12:04 am I built with them about 3 or so years ago. Was an interesting process - it was my first time building, so have nothing to compare it too. But i'm about to do it a second time, so will be interesting to compare. Overall i would rate them average. Sales guy was excellent, he was the pretty much the entire reason i built with them. The pre start file was pretty crap, there was very minimal info about what you could select from. Best bet is to ask and find out the different suppliers and go visit them direct. They can generally advise you about what the standard selection range for Blueprint is and show you the different options. They do have a pretty good prestart selections area with samples of a whole bunch of stuff - so worth a trip there before your prestart to have a look. Pre start girl didn't really help with selections - just purely noted down what i had picked, and confirmed everything. Construction flew along with the site works and slab down - however then i got caught waiting for a bricking team. Ended up being a single brickie who did a brilliant job, but 1 guy can only work so fast. From there things were reasonably ok ended up being just over 5 months when i did hand over and got keys. I wasn't impressed when i first arrived at the house to find majority of the issues i picked up at the PCI weren't done and when i spoke to Blueprint they refused to fix them... After sales support has been quite good however. Everything identified in the 3 month maintenance period was fixed. Then about 3 months ago i noticed paint was bubbling in my hallway behind the shower. They came out within a couple of days, found water in the wall. Identified the issue and are currently checking it waiting for it to dry out. They also sorted out an issue with my front portal within a couple of weeks too. Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 12Jan 10, 2014 11:19 am We are currently building with blueprint & have already done pre start etc. For your tile selection you now go direct to either European or Crosby to make your selection. The della vita tiles only come in 4 colours (which we did find limiting) they are; white, latte, slate & forrest. In regards to soil test completion etc, they allow themselves 8 weeks from the time your soil tests & contour surveys are done. In this time they draw up all the site costs, house plans and send off to council. It is after this your pre start is arrange. Once you have completed pre start I think my memory they allow 3 weeks to draw up the variations. You will receive a copy in the mail & are required to sign this & pay for any extras. They then hand your file to the scheduling team to order everything & arrange earthworks at the site, this takes 3-4 weeks with slab down about a week later. Thanks to christmas we are only in our first week of that 3-4 week period but HOPEFULLY are earthworks are scheduled shortly & the slab laid!! It's been a long process for us as we had to wait 7 months for our titles. Hope that all helps Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 13Feb 02, 2014 1:51 pm Thanks for the advice guys! We are still waiting for earthworks to complete. Now with the recent fire in Ellenbrook, I think that's set us back yet again. But we are trying to think positive and at least we can keep saving for prestart. Just wondering if anyone knows a rough pricing for upgrade items for prestart (sinks, taps, shower head in bathroom), extra bench in kitchen, etc. any info will be much appreciated. Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 14Feb 13, 2014 5:53 pm Steph23 Thanks for the advice guys! We are still waiting for earthworks to complete. Now with the recent fire in Ellenbrook, I think that's set us back yet again. But we are trying to think positive and at least we can keep saving for prestart. Just wondering if anyone knows a rough pricing for upgrade items for prestart (sinks, taps, shower head in bathroom), extra bench in kitchen, etc. any info will be much appreciated. Sorry to hear that hope it doesn't take too long to get back on track Blueprint have just bought in a new line so I'm not sure about upgrade pricing for the new stuff. We had a $2k pre start allowance & after upgrading the kitchen sink, kitchen tap to a goose neck, both bathroom sinks, plus both taps, trough in laundry, extra lighting and extra power points. We only spent another $1700, so not too bad really. Oh in this we also paid extra for all tiles to be cut on a angle so they sit flush! We didn't upgrade the shower heads as we have 3 & it's was totally overpriced. It was cheaper to buy it later then pay the difference. Extra benches mite cost you. We added two cupboards each side of the range hood at the start. I think they were $600 each? They will price everything up for you at pre start & then you can cross off what you don't want. Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 15Feb 18, 2014 9:10 am Jaynay21 Steph23 Thanks for the advice guys! We are still waiting for earthworks to complete. Now with the recent fire in Ellenbrook, I think that's set us back yet again. But we are trying to think positive and at least we can keep saving for prestart. Just wondering if anyone knows a rough pricing for upgrade items for prestart (sinks, taps, shower head in bathroom), extra bench in kitchen, etc. any info will be much appreciated. Sorry to hear that hope it doesn't take too long to get back on track Blueprint have just bought in a new line so I'm not sure about upgrade pricing for the new stuff. We had a $2k pre start allowance & after upgrading the kitchen sink, kitchen tap to a goose neck, both bathroom sinks, plus both taps, trough in laundry, extra lighting and extra power points. We only spent another $1700, so not too bad really. Oh in this we also paid extra for all tiles to be cut on a angle so they sit flush! We didn't upgrade the shower heads as we have 3 & it's was totally overpriced. It was cheaper to buy it later then pay the difference. Extra benches mite cost you. We added two cupboards each side of the range hood at the start. I think they were $600 each? They will price everything up for you at pre start & then you can cross off what you don't want. Cheers for the info. Yeah it's going slowly, just waiting for titles which they confirmed should be due in March *fingers crossed*. Wow still all adds up though hey! What tiles do you have? We got the Della Vita Tiles, our sales rep kept going on about them saying they are nice big tiles. But apparently they only come in 4 colours. So I hope they have a colour I like. Also pretty annoyed we wanted to change stuff before we finalised our design but he kept saying 'you can do it in prestart'...little did we know they over price the hell out of stuff. Feel like we've been taken for fools - but oh well guess that's just how the game works! At least we can keep saving til prestart, the rate it's going we might be able to save up over a couple grand to use. Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 16Feb 19, 2014 6:40 pm Woohoo not long then! We waited 6 months for titles, it's a killer lol We have the della vita tile as well. They are nice & big 450x450 by memory and yes they only come in 4 colours which did suck lol. You have a white tile which I was told is tough to keep clean, a green-ish coloured tile called forrest, which did look nice, a matt black tile which was also nice, but had a greasy hand print on it! This made me think of possible issues with foot prints once laid! And finally a latte tile which we opted for In pre start you cannot make any structural changes, these must be done beforehand & they'll charge you for every change, after the plans have been drafted. Something's you do think, stuff that, I'm not paying that much haha. But most things are fine. We paid an extra $1000 to upgrade our trough to a laminex cupboard, to match our bathrooms. Just go wild in pre start, see how much it costs & then delete what you want. Our pre start consultant was great & really helpful. Have you decided on all your colours? This saved ALLOT of time for us, as we knew what we wanted & they loved us for that lol. Also have you selected your carpet yet? We did this well ahead of time & upgraded to a much softer carpet. That cost us an extra $620 that you pay just before the carpet is laid. Exciting times ahead Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 17Feb 26, 2014 10:10 am Jaynay21 Woohoo not long then! We waited 6 months for titles, it's a killer lol We have the della vita tile as well. They are nice & big 450x450 by memory and yes they only come in 4 colours which did suck lol. You have a white tile which I was told is tough to keep clean, a green-ish coloured tile called forrest, which did look nice, a matt black tile which was also nice, but had a greasy hand print on it! This made me think of possible issues with foot prints once laid! And finally a latte tile which we opted for In pre start you cannot make any structural changes, these must be done beforehand & they'll charge you for every change, after the plans have been drafted. Something's you do think, stuff that, I'm not paying that much haha. But most things are fine. We paid an extra $1000 to upgrade our trough to a laminex cupboard, to match our bathrooms. Just go wild in pre start, see how much it costs & then delete what you want. Our pre start consultant was great & really helpful. Have you decided on all your colours? This saved ALLOT of time for us, as we knew what we wanted & they loved us for that lol. Also have you selected your carpet yet? We did this well ahead of time & upgraded to a much softer carpet. That cost us an extra $620 that you pay just before the carpet is laid. Exciting times ahead Yeah I think we are on the 6 months mark as well with titles! Where are you building? What stage are you at now? Great colour choice with the latte tiles. What have you paired the kitchen cabinets with? We were looking at the black tiles but will have to see them in person and check the practicality of them. We currently have light coloured tiles in our rental and its horrible having to clean them every few days. To be honest, we were so excited when we first got the prestart folder and looked through it every night. But 3 months later it hasn't had much use and have to find the motivation to start picking colours, etc. How did you find the standard carpet? I'm hoping a lot of the standard stuff is good as we are on a budget. Is it much more to upgrade taps, sinks, shower, etc? I heard that if you take things off in prestart they don't give you the full price? Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 18Feb 26, 2014 11:07 am We are building in byford what about you guys? Slab went down 17th Feb & bricks due to start about the 10th March very exciting to watch. We went with a silver grey cupboard. I wanted something timeless & not white lol. Sometimes white is too much. Then the splash back is a dark grey that almost throws a touch of blue! I'm keeping my fingers crossed it all works haha. It's so hard to pair colours that you haven't seen anywhere else The slate tiles were really nice! Other then the handprint, I was just worried it would all be too dark, if I paired it with our other colour choices? We also have a toddler so dirty fingers are always on my mind lol Oh gosh, yes we were the same when we first got our selection file haha. Then months passed & it was no fun any more, because you're just waiting & waiting & waiting for pre start haha I didn't like the standard carpet. It's rough & hard. Plus it has a crappy underlay. We upgraded to a soft, almost suede like carpet & they upgraded the underlay for "free" (so they say haha) It's 1000x better & only cost us $620 more for 4 bedrooms inc WIR & a theatre room. The sinks, taps etc in standard are fine!! I upgraded them because we were fortunate enough to do so. What I did do, was google the standard tap wear, link it to their "preferred suppliers", write down that price, then find out the price of the upgraded taps, sinks etc that I wanted. From there I worked out the difference & created a budget. Price wise it wasn't too bad. But I'm not sure what their upgrades cost now after bringing in new designs. In pre start they write everything into a spreadsheet then go off & calculate this after you are done. You will just sit in the office while they do this. If you decide not to go ahead this something, they simply cross it off with a pen & write down a new total, that you sign off on. Re: Experiences with Blueprint Homes 20Feb 26, 2014 1:06 pm The Glades is gorgeous! We're in Kalimna Redink has beautiful homes. I've noticed quite a few of their homes being built in Byford at the moment. What stage are you at? You must be so excited You have mandatory building inspections and privately engaged building inspections. The difference between the two comes down to inspecting the building so it's safe and… 3 18025 Ask for references and speak to them. If they are defensive or try to avoid the request, walk. 1 74686 |